The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

THE Bahamas Real Estate Association’s (BREA) president said yesterday that she was now in “wait-and-see” mode over sought-after Government responses that will determine the next move over the controversial appraisal system being pushed by two Canadian-owned banks.

“We actually wrote to them again last Friday, Caral Sweeting, the BREA president, said. “We addressed a few other issues with them and we have not heard anything from anyone. I haven’t been bombarded by either of the banks so I don’t know if the government has spoken them to say until we have everything sorted out back off or whether they decided to back off.

“We are still waiting and we still want answers from the Government. We have gotten our lawyer to give an opinion of the matter so now it’s just wait and see what they come back with.”

The Government has been called upon to tackle the rift between the Bahamian real estate community and two banks, the Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) and Scotiabank, over their plans to foist a new appraisal system, managed by Canadian company, NAS Valuations, on the sector. NAS is licenced in the Bahamas as a financial software provider, not an appraisal management services operator, which is effectively what it would be doing for RBC and Scotiabank.

BREA and its members have rejected two previous versions of the appraisal management contract that the two banks and NAS wanted them to sign up to. Realtors had four main concerns, only one of which was the attempt to have them assume 100 per cent legal (and cost) liability should any appraisal result in court action. Apart from intellectual property rights/ownership of an appraiser’s report, the other outstanding concerns involved the ability of the banks and NAS to “dictate” the appraiser’s fee and who is selected to carry out the valuation.

Ms Sweeting said: “We wrote to them (the government) on a few other issues. It’s a wait-and-see game now which is good for me so now I can focus on VAT and how that’s going to impact us. I’m hoping to have answers on that early next week. It’s still very unclear on how that is going to impact us.”